


castles of ash and smoke

by starblessed



Category: Bandstand - Oberacker/Oberacker & Taylor
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Miscarriage, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-10 00:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15279798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: "My girlhood dreamsOf a fairytale loveOnce all were coming true.Now the kingdom screamsTo weeping skies aboveI cannot do thisWithout you."Julia doesn't just lose Michael that day.





	castles of ash and smoke

**Author's Note:**

> this story... is an exploration of julia, her character before michael's death, and a heartbreaking idea i had. this story involves losing a husband, and losing a baby. there's a bit of blood involved in a certain part. please read with caution! this isn't supposed to be an easy story to read, but i wanted to write it to explore julia, and tell a bit of her story from her point of view.

About a month after Michael’s leave ends, Julia starts getting headaches.

The first one takes her by surprise. She hasn’t learned to recognize the signs, so the nagging ache in her head since she woke up that morning was something that could be ignored. Maybe she hasn’t been drinking enough water; maybe her body is angry at her for skipping breakfast. Whatever it is, she can still sell lipsticks, so the pain gets pushed to the back of her mind.

Until it presses its way forward… literally. One moment, Julia is rearranging a shelf of mascara. The next, she’s doubled over the counter, seeing stars.

“Oh Jesus, what’s the matter with you?”

Frannie, the girl working next to her at the counter, has a loud voice on a good day. Now, she might as well be the announcer in Cleveland Stadium. Julia groans and presses a hand to her temple. Her makeup won’t take kindly to being smeared against the counter, but she just can’t pick her head up right now.

She hears her coworker cross to her side. Lacking the energy to fight, Julia allows herself to be steered away from the counter, and into the tiny employee’s break room in the corner of the floor. Frannie sits her down. The next thing Julia knows, she’s got a cold glass of water in her hands, and wide eyes gaping at her in concern.

Guilty, Julia hangs her head. The water tastes stagnant on her lips.

“Sooo,” says Frannie, not content to let the moment of blissful silence drag on. “You get headaches like that all the time? This just a normal Tuesday for you?”

As Julia weighs her options, her shoulders slump. She doesn’t want to lie. It’s better, she decides, to be honest. “I’ve never had anything like that before in my life. I don’t know what it was.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, you’re not supposed to — _double over_ like that!” Frannie’s words are harsh, but her tone betrays nothing but worry. Julia can’t bring herself to look up until she feels a hand land on her shoulder.

“Hey — Julia.” There is no intrusion in her friend's dark eyes… only honest concern. This in itself is a knife twisting through Julia’s stomach. “Really. Are you okay?”

The automatic reassurance stalls on her lips. There are a thousand things she could say, a thousand excuses, a thousand justifications. She’s ran through every one herself. None of them have been convincing. Day by day, she only manages to prove herself wrong... and this is yet another nail in the coffin.

Julia sucks on her lower lip, hands tightening around her water glass. She gazes down into the cool crystal. For a moment, she wishes she could immerse herself in it, and escape everything else… how _sweet_ that would be. How _unrealistic._

“No,” she answers softly. “No. Nothing is okay at all.”

* * *

Blueberry pancakes have always been her favorite breakfast (and one of the few things her mother can prepare without oversalting, overspicing, or burning). That weekend, she finds herself bent double in the bathroom five minutes after eating them.

“This has gone on long enough,” her mother declares, once Julia has pulled her head out of the toilet.

Julia shoots a wary look over her shoulder, and pulls her knees to her chest. Curling up in a ball helps. It’s childish, and makes her feel much smaller than she is. That’s what she needs right now.

Not a critical gaze bearing down on her. Footsteps echo against tile as her mother moves forward into the bathroom. Julia balances her chin on her knees, letting out a tiny grunt. “It’s just a bug.”

“It’s not a bug.”

“You don’t know that, Mom.”

“But _you_ do.” Her mother plants her hands on her hips, gazing down at Julia like she’s a little girl again. Oh, how Julia wishes she could be that young… what a _perfect escape_ from all her problems. (No husband at war, no agonizing wait between letters, no morning sickness and migraines, no slow-creeping _sureness.)_

Slowly, Julia lifts her head up. There’s a pout on her lips, and she exudes all the vulnerability she usually hates showing. Her mother’s face softens. She hunches down on the ground next to Julia, placing a gentle hand on her back. The sigh that tears from her could move mountains.

“You go to a doctor first,” she declares. “No old wives tales and instinct. They don’t work, trust me.” Her nose scrunches up. “I didn’t realize I was ready to have you ‘til you were halfway out in a taxi cab in Toledo and I was scaring the lord’s limbo out of an entire traffic jam.”

Julia lets out a laugh that sounds too much like a sob. Her mother’s hand rubs circles into her back. “Of course your _father_ was nowhere to be found. But we dealt with that… you and me. Like we always do.” A strand of hair is tucked back, out of her daughter’s face. Her expression is unimaginably gentle. “Just like we’ll deal with this. I’ll drive the car, sweetie… but the hard part is up to you. You’re gonna have to do all the pushing.”

Julia’s face falls. “Mom.”

“What? Of the car!”

“Your metaphor is too accurate.”

“Well, when your daughter’s a poet, you have to learn to keep up.”

She presses a kiss to the side of Julia’s head. Julia leans into her mother’s embrace with a heavy sigh, and lets her eyes slip shut. Just for a moment, the future doesn’t seem so terrifying after all. Whatever is happening to her, she isn’t on her own. She’s got her mother by her side… and she knows that across the sea, there’s a man who’ll be ecstatic to learn he’s going to be a father.

She can't explain why she feels so alone.

* * *

The day of the doctor’s visit, she argues with her mother until her voice goes hoarse. The rest of the afternoon is spent bundled up on the couch, flipping through magazines of her favorite stars, and dozing whenever her body allows her to. Anything to escape her mother’s disappointed stare, and the guilt gnawing at her own stomach.

She should have gone. That’s the right thing to do, the responsible thing. It’s what a _good mother_ would do.

Julia has always liked to imagine she’d make a fine mother; from a childhood spent dressing baby dolls, to teenage years babysitting for a few extra dollars, she’s always had a way with children. She loves them. When she sees babies in their bassinets on the street, she waved and makes faces. The neighbor children across the street love to bring her dandelions plucked from their front yard. In church, she’s the first to coo over tots wearing bonnets and bows. Father Mulaney has asked her to teach Sunday School more than once.

Julia has always _adored_ children… so she can’t understand why she gazes at her own stomach with dread.

She doesn’t eat dinner that night, which is her biggest mistake of all. Half an hour later, her mother pushes open her bedroom door, and sets a plate down at the end of the bed.

“Eat,” she says. “And I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

It’s rare that her mother gets strict… but when she does, she means it. Julia reluctantly sits up, and swallows a few mouthfuls of dry cauliflower. The smile she offers her mother is lackluster, but grateful.

“You don’t have to fake it. They taste like dust.”

“No! Of course not! They —” Julia hesitates, then concedes the point. “Yeah, they do.”

Her mother shrugs. “I did my best. At least I can say _that_ for myself.”

This is a low blow, but Julia doesn’t deflect it. She’s as disappointed in herself as her mother is, maybe more. Even the thought of missing that appointment leaves her feeling queasy. She swallows another mouthful of lumpy potatoes to make up for it.

For a long time, her mother watches her eat in silence. When she finally sighs, it feels like a tentative peace has been shattered. The olive branch twines its way around Julia’s throat, choking her.

“Alright. This isn’t like you at all. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter, Mom, I just didn’t want to go.” She is defensive without knowing why; it leads her to sound more like a spoiled girl than a young woman of twenty-two. (How she hates feeling immature, _childish_ — it’s one thing Julia, even as a little girl, could never tolerate.)

Her mother takes a seat at the end of her bed. She won’t let the topic drop, won’t put it to bed and let it rest. This is probably a godsend, because if it were up to Julia, the topic would sleep until it died.

“Really, what is it? You don’t want to know for sure?”

Julia purses her lips, remaining silent for a moment. When her answer comes, it’s reluctant. “I already know for sure.”

“Well, you haven’t exactly been subtle about it. Honey, your chest is —“ Her mother pauses, then makes a ballooning gesture over her own breasts. Julia buried her face in the nearest pillow. “And you ate graham crackers with Tobasco sauce this morning. At this point, you’re either pregnant or molting.”

 _“Mom.”_   The words draws itself out, pained. “Please.”

“I’m not judging you for avoiding the doctor. I can understand that — even if it was the wrong thing to do, and it _was,_ but, hey —“ Her mother goes silent for a moment. Julia hears her wind down, and then sigh. A hand comes to rest on Julia’s back, and she relishes the tender contact.

“You can’t avoid it, sweetie. I know this isn’t anything like you had planned — but it's here now. If this is how life happens, it’s how it happens.”

Julia’s brows furrow. She bites her tongue to keep from bursting out, even though everything inside her screams to. After a few seconds, she can’t hold it in anymore. She springs up to face her mother, hair a mess, eyes glistening.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be! I’m not supposed to be _on my own!_ Michael isn’t supposed to be thousands of miles away — he should be right here!”

In all of Julia’s fantasies — from the time she was a little girl, to the day she became Mrs. Julia Trojan —- she imagined a start to their family nothing short of picturesque. She would sit Michael down and tell him when he time was just right; she’d get to see the way his face lit up with joy, feel his arms around her as he tugged her into an embrace. Every sensation is still so real that she can feel it… even now, knowing that a fantasy is all it’s ever be.

Michael isn’t here with her to learn he’s going to be a father. He’s somewhere in the Pacific, chasing down the villains of Pearl Harbor… off being the kind of _hero_ his children will grow up admiring. _(Will it_ be heroism, after he gets back? Everyone says so, and Julia wants to believe it… but she can’t help wondering if it will be like the veterans of the Great War, swallowing all the bitterness down like poison until one day they choke on it. She could not bear that happening to her Michael.) He isn’t here to embrace her. He won’t be here for the midnight cravings, to feel his child kick, to whisper sweet baby-talk to her stomach… chances are, he won’t be here to see his child born.

Oh god, none of it’s right. It’s not _fair_. This is so wrong, _all wrong,_ wrong down to her very bones — yet to try expressing it in words would make her sound like a little girl all over again.

Slowly, Julia reaches over and pulls open the drawer of her bedside table. She extracts a pink leather-bound notebook, and flips through the pages until she comes to the right one. The book is balanced in her mother’s hands; then she retreats, as if it’s burned her.

 _My girlhood dreams_  
_Of a fairytale love_  
_Once all were coming true._  
_Now the kingdom screams_  
_To weeping skies above_  
_I cannot do this_  
_Without you._

Her mother reads this all in silence; her face betrays no surprise, no remorse. When she closes the book, it is with the greatest care. She sets it on Julia’s bedside table, and reaches out to pull her close. A kiss is pressed to the crown of Julia’s head; experienced mother’s hands smooth the mess from her hair.

“You’re not going to tell him?” she asks, only it isn’t really a question. Julia swallows down her own mouthful of bitterness, and manages to shake her head.

“No,” she replies. “Not yet.”

Not until things are more definite; not until she has stable ground under her feet once more. Michael _will know,_ but only when the letter reaches him across the sea — and that’s a letter she still has to write.

(Perhaps there’s a small part of her that hopes, desperately, that is she holds out long enough Michael will come home to hear the news in person… and then that _fantasy_ can become a sweet reality.)

 _Not yet._ Julia will bide her time, and hold this certainty inside her for a while more.

* * *

There is a tiny bump growing beneath her dress, and Julia has already named it Oscar.

She cycles through names _every day,_ really... but Oscar seems like the one. It brings to mind Oscar Wilde, visions of dancing Salomé and decaying Dorian Grey. Michael might not appreciate it for its literary merit, but his wife’s enthusiasm? Certainly.

She doesn’t forget, of course, that these are none of them stories with happy endings. This is her only reservation about _Oscar_. Her baby deserves his happily ever after, especially after such an... unprecedented prologue.

Finding authors who ended their stories sweetly is harder than it sounds. After cycling through William (Shakespeare), Charles (Dickens), and Victor (Hugo), Julia is about ready to give up.

Michael’s father was also named Michael. So was his grandfather... and his grandfather before that. Michael has always made it very clear that another _Michael Trojan_ is not in the cards. There’s no chance of naming him after Julia’s father; and she’s always hated the name _Guy_ to begin with. Since both patrilineal options are out, she starts considering ways to alter _June_ — before her mother swiftly shuts that one down.

“Julia, for God’s sake, he’d resent you less if you named him after the neighbors’ cat!”

Somehow, Julia doesn’t think  _Whiskers_ is an option.

There is one person whose input she longs to hear. Michael would have a thousand ideas, and a thousand ways to pitch them to her. He’d make her smile at the truly awful ones; they’d probably bicker over one or two, but at least it would be someone else to bounce off of. The one other person whose opinion matters _most._ Michael should have a hand in naming his son… and that’s why Julia hasn’t settled on Oscar, or anything, just yet.

Michael can’t pitch a single name... because she hasn’t told him.

 _Yet._ Telling him is an inevitability, she knows, and certainly something she’s going to do — when the time is right. So far, it hasn’t been. She’s poured over Michael’s last letter a thousand times (memorized his lighthearted remarks about rain and K-rations, engraved every promise of tomorrow in her heart). Each time she sits down in front of a black sheet of paper, she feels ready to pen the words in her heart… but not the one secret that takes up so much of her daily attention.

If Michael knew, he’d be overjoyed; but Julia cannot stand to read that elation in his scribbled handwriting, on a piece of paper folded one-too-many times. She’s still clinging to that fantasy, and perhaps it’s selfish of her… but she can abide being selfish, for just a little while.

After all, they have time to spare. As well as a future that — god willing — will all play out the way it’s _meant to._ Not as she planned, certainly — if there’s one thing their baby has taught her, it’s that nothing works out the way it’s planned — but the right future. One with Michael by her side. Without war, without fear, without grief — where they can raise a family together in a free and peaceful world. A lifetime of happiness.

This is the promise Julia clings to when her pen stalls over paper in every aborted letter. _Soon,_ she promises herself (and Michael, a world away). _We’ve got time. Soon… and after that, a whole lifetime together._

Then a soldier makes his way up the walk.

Julia is in the kitchen, so she almost doesn’t notice. They’re having guests over tonight; she’s busy baking a pie, organizing the table, arranging the entire house just right. Only when she enters the living room to set a floral arrangement down does she glance out the window and see him.

 _Michael_ is the first thought that flashes through her head; then, _no._

In an instant, Julia’s entire life plays out before her in flashes. Michael, home again; leaping into his arms, whispering the great secret in his ear; raising their son together; picnics by the lake; Michael and their boy playing catch in the front yard; growing old together, with the family they’ve built around them. This beautiful future dances around her like a mirage, wisps of fog that seem so tangible. If she reached out, she could grab them. She could seize them tight, and never let them go. She could throw herself into her Michael’s arms, safe in the knowledge that he’s home…

Her eyes lock upon the soldier’s grim face. Everything about him is unknown, unfamiliar, wrong. He wears sympathy like a shield.

There is a telegram in his hands.

Julia’s world drops out under her. A sharp stabbing pain lances through her stomach.

And her future blows away like grains of sand on the wind.

* * *

One week later, blood runs in crimson rivers down Julia’s legs. Once again, she clings tight to her mother on the bathroom floor. The pain is the only thing that keeps her anchored... the pain, and the _terror_ of exactly what is happening.

The tears pour out of her as if they have never known any other release; each gasp wrenches itself from her chest. It hurts, but this is more than the physical agony of losing her child. It is the life inside of her draining out, bit by bit. Not just the baby, but everything that made her who she was — her hope, her heart, her joy. All of her is bathed in red and washed away.

“I can’t lose the last piece of him,” she gasps. “It’s _all I have left…_ Mama, _please…”_ She buries her face in her mother’s shoulder and weeps. She wails. She screams. Julia rages until all the fight has drained out of her; then she slumps in her mother’s embrace, and drifts away.

Unconsciousness is a relief. She doesn’t want to be awake to feel the last remnant of Michael die.

When she wakes up, she is in her own bed, and sun is shining through her flowered curtains. There’s a glass of water and some painkillers on the table. Her mother has left her favorite book of poems by her bed.

 _“Because I could not stop for Death –_  
_He kindly stopped for me –_  
_The Carriage held but just Ourselves –_  
_And Immortality.”_

Julia closes the book, holds it to her chest, and remains utterly still for a long, long time.

* * *

The world resumes turning slowly… as if it is trying to remember how.

Julia, too, needs to learn how to exist again. It feels as if she’s woken from a dream, to a world she has no clue how to adjust to. This is a world without optimism around every corner; without skies wide open, stretching towards the heavens; without the promise of tomorrow safe within her grasp. A world without Michael is not one she wants to live in, but she learns to anyway. (Because the only other option is to give up — to spend the rest of her life in despair. Julia will never do that… because by god, her husband may be dead, her baby may be gone… but for some reason, she’s _still alive.)_

She gives up the house she and Michael lived in, officially moving back with her mother. She goes to work and comes home. She sings at church, and murmurs prayers that feel empty.

Life goes on for Julia Trojan.

Some days, this feels like more than she deserves. Some days, it does not feel as if she is living at all —- just going through the motions, haunted by ghosts that will never leave her side. Some days, she wonders if all the life that drained out of her has left a hollow absence where _Julia_ used to be, and a stranger in its wake.

Julia closes her eyes, breathes, and presses through another day.

Even if she is living it alone, life goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> ( if something like this ever did happen to julia, i think it would take her a long time to be able to talk about it. not just in the context of the show, but in her relationship with donny; i doubt she'd ever share her loss with the whole band, but at some point down the line, find it in herself to tell donny.)


End file.
